Alive
by Alien ABC's
Summary: What was Lind L. Tailor’s crime, and why was his case kept so secret? Wammy’s House, the number Thirteen, and the month of October. Some ghosts are hard to lay to rest.
1. October 1st

_Explanation of this fic's on my profile. ;) It'll become multi-chaptered day after tomorrow. :)  
_

* * *

A handsome man with long black hair and dark gray eyes sat at table beside a French window, sipping tea and plotting murder.

The man's name was Lind L. Tailor. Of course, he had enough aliases that he never actually needed to share it, not that it would have led to him - according to the birth and citizenship records of every country in the world, Lind L. Tailor did not exist. He himself could not have said where he was from; he'd run away from his last caretakers. The only person he'd ever considered family was the boy he'd met at that most recent home - Brother. Lind L. Tailor didn't know Brother's real name, or if he even had one. He was just Brother, and the two thought of themselves as brothers even though they weren't actually related. But they got along well, and they had similar views on their caretakers, and they were both monsters.

Brother, for the most part, seemed to be content with the putting-salt-on-slugs variety of evil, but Lind L. Tailor had always aspired to higher things. And look where it had landed them - Brother was dead or as good as, finally tracked down after a set of brutal murders (because he'd eventually tired of slugs) and left to rot in prison somewhere - whereas Lind L. Tailor was alive, doing well, and about to pull off a crime he'd been planning for over a decade.

He smiled to himself and sipped his tea.


	2. October 3rd

_So… yes, this actually is the same fic. XDD I know it seems really different from the first chapter, but that one was more of a prologue - most of the fic will be about L solving the mystery, and since I love the Wammy Kids, I decided to set it in England so that L could work from there and I could include his heirs. XDD This won't be all fluff, though - as the mystery starts to develop, there will be dark parts, and hopefully that'll make it interesting. Anyway, I hope you enjoy! :)  
_

* * *

"_No,_ Watari." Mello crossed his arms and glared up at his caretaker, scowling petulantly.

"Mello." The elderly gentleman sighed, looking as though his patience was wearing thin. "He didn't ask for this either, but you know the rule about going into town alone. You and Matt will hardly notice him; all you have to do is let him follow you around."

Mello's glower deepened. "We're not bringing _Near._"

"You _are_ bringing Near," Watari corrected, "if you want to go to the Halloween Fair at all."

Mello knew when it was time to stop arguing. Sulkily, he nodded, then slouched out of the room to find his best friend - who turned out to be in the playroom, playing Super Smash Brothers with several of the other children.

"Watari says we have to bring _him_," Mello explained when his redheaded friend had triumphed and handed over his controller to another contender. He didn't have to say who he was talking about; it would have been obvious even without the frustrated jerk of his head towards the corner where the resident puzzle champion was currently reading a book and twirling a lock of white hair with his free hand.

"You know, if you sound too happy about it, Mello," he remarked without looking up, "I might worry that you have some ulterior motive."

Matt pretended not to notice Mello trying not to smile.

"Anyway, come on," the blond boy said. "We don't have all day."

"Actually, Mello, we do—"

"Just go to your room and get some shoes. And some real clothes. You're not planning to go downtown in pajamas, are you?"

Near blinked at him. Mello introduced his palm to his forehead. "At least put some shoes on."

Obligingly, Near shuffled off in the direction of his room and returned a few minutes later wearing scuffed white sneakers. They made a strange contrast with his pajamas.

"Let's go!" Mello exclaimed enthusiastically, leading the way out the door. He was excited about being outside, having an adventure - he and Matt had only been deemed old enough to go out by themselves a few years ago, and it still always felt daring and independent to walk down the slightly grassy lane away from the orphanage and enter the bustle of the nearby town. Today, their destination was the empty lot a few blocks away from the town square, where the Halloween Fair was set up every year at the beginning of October.

When they entered the Fair, Mello felt the usual rush of excitement and anticipation that tended to visit with Halloween. There were orange and black decorations all around, and booths selling candy apples, and costumed volunteers wandering around and working the games… for the first time, the atmosphere of the season felt tangible.

The first table they reached had a large estimation jar filled with candy corn and a clipboard for writing guesses. Squinting and biting his lip, Mello considered before jotting down _500_ and a false name. Matt guessed six-hundred and handed the pen off to Near, who stood twirling his hair and examining the jar for a moment before writing _3200_.

"Three-_thousand?_" Mello demanded incredulously. "No way there are that many in there."

Near shrugged, and Mello rolled his eyes before leading onward. At one of the booths, they bought candy apples, and they then spent the next few minutes wandering around trying to eat them without getting their faces sticky - which was, of course, impossible.

After an expedition for napkins and another to find a drinking fountain, they returned to wandering, browsing the crafts fair section for interesting booths. As Mello was stooping to examine a particularly realistic-looking pencil sharpener in the shape of a human skull, he felt a tug at his sleeve.

"What is it, Near?" he asked, distracted by trying to figure out whether you were supposed to stick your pencil into the eye socket or the nose hole.

"Don't look," Near implored quietly, "but there's a man back there who's staring at you."

Mello's first instinct was to whip around, but somehow, he managed to stop himself and instead reached for a mirror whose frame was designed to look like it was made out of bones. Carefully, he lifted it on the pretext of checking the price tag and took a quick look behind them.

About fifty feet back, hovering in the shadow of one of the booths and looking straight at him, was a man dressed in a hooded black cloak and wearing a grim reaper mask.

Mello put the mirror down. "Come on," he said in a low voice, trying to keep it steady. "Let's go." He wanted to grab Matt's hand - or even _Near's_, though he would have walked up and introduced himself to the stranger before admitting to that - but instead, he just clenched his fists and started walking away from the booth slowly, his two companions following in a slightly closer-together group than they had been earlier.

"Is he gone?" Matt asked quietly after they had passed a few more booths and crossed an aisle.

"No," Near said. "I think he's following us."

Mello felt his breathing going shallow and tried to relax. After all, they were in a place full of people. Nobody could do anything to them here - and if the man looked ready to follow them home, they could always call Watari instead of walking back alone. All of the children were required to carry cell phones whenever they went out, and all of them had his number on speed-dial in case anything ever happened. In a way, it was even surer than calling the police, and a good deal more comforting. But Mello hoped they wouldn't have to resort to that - the strange man was probably just walking the same way as them. Probably. He risked a glance over his shoulder on the pretext of checking to make sure Matt was right behind him and saw that the dark figure was still trailing them, moving slowly but steadily from stall to stall, death's-head mask shadowed by the hood of its cloak.

"I have an idea," he murmured once he'd turned again, trying to sound much braver than he felt. "Once we go around that corner, he won't be able to see us for a minute. It'd make sense to turn right and try to get lost in the crowd around the stage, but if we hurry, we can duck under the back of that tent and into it before he realizes where we've gone - that way we can lose him."

"Okay," Matt agreed, his voice unusually small. They were getting close to the corner now. Just a few more steps… two… one… and they were around it. Forgetting his earlier resolution, Mello grabbed one of Matt's hands with his right, and felt Near latch onto the left - and then all three were sprinting for the tent. Matt immediately knelt down and lifted the edge of the canvas, and Mello practically pushed Near through before dropping to his hands and knees and crawling through himself. Matt followed, the edge of the tent fell, and they were inside.

For a moment, they simply sat there, breathing hard, and then Mello dove for one of the eyelets in the canvas and pushed his bangs out of his eyes to peer through it.

"Do you see him?" Matt whispered. There were a pair of hands clenched around Mello's elbow, but he wasn't sure whose they were.

"Yeah," he replied softly. "I don't think he saw us. But he's looking around - he was definitely following us. Now he's looking the other way. Now he's going towards the stage. There he goes; I think he's gone." He let out a deep breath and heard his two companions do the same.

"I wonder why he was following you," Matt mused.

"Dunno," Mello replied thoughtfully. Now that they were out of apparent danger, the fright was fast becoming an adventure. "Probably just some random creep. You know, the kind Watari's always warning us about."

"Maybe it _was_ Watari," Matt suddenly theorized, "spying on us to see if we were misbehaving. That would explain why he was looking at you, Mel."

Near paused. "Considering the history you two have," he remarked thoughtfully, "I can almost believe that."

Mello snorted. "What are you talking about? We do our misbehaving at home; not when we're out in public."

"I dunno," Near shrugged. "There was that time you tried to build a fort in the public library. And that time you started a food fight in the ice cream shop. And that time you told Watari you were going to The Jungle Book 2 and then snuck into The Ring instead."

"So?" Mello scoffed. "That movie wasn't even scary."

Near raised an eyebrow. "I'm sure," he agreed. "That must be why you insisted on sleeping in L's room for the next week."

Mello scowled. "Like you wouldn't have for a _month_!"

"I didn't say I wouldn't have," Near explained. "I was merely pointing out that you—"

"Hey, guys, look!" Matt broke in quickly. "This tent is the exhibit for the pumpkin-carving contest. Wanna look at the entries?"

Exchanging a last pair of slightly resentful glances, Mello and Near complied.

Actually, the pumpkins did turn out to be quite interesting. There were great variety of them, from classic carved faces to strange and indecipherable modern art. Matt particularly liked one with Bowser's face; Mello one that had the tragedy mask on the front and comedy on the back; Near one that was painted to look like a small round house with windows cut in the sides for yellow light to spill out. They all liked the one that was made to look like Cinderella's carriage, complete with wire vines for wheels and little toy mice harnessed to the front. And they all _loved_ the withered zombie-lantern, a red bulb inside making its eyes glow, that was feasting on the seeds-and-goop brains of a healthier-looking pumpkin. By the time they left the exhibit, they were all in considerably better moods.

"Hey, look!" Matt pointed. "One of those big inflatable obstacle-course things! I'll race someone!"

"You're _on_," Mello said, itching to burn off some energy. Near watched with a vaguely amused expression on his face as the two pulled off their shoes and lined up at the start of the long structure, fidgeting and preparing to run.

At last, the volunteer supervising the course gave them the go-ahead, and each leapt forward into one of the twin tunnels at the beginning. The passageways were fairly narrow, but Mello was small enough to scramble forward quickly on all fours, emerging before a set of vertical rubber pillars, followed by a set of horizontal ones. Attempting to dive through the latter, he got caught halfway through, and by the time he managed to extricate himself, Matt had already gone over the top and was starting up the climbing slope that led to the final slide. Anticipating defeat, Mello dove forward in time to grab one of Matt's ankles and yank him backwards. With a cry of dismay, the redhead lost his balance and fell backwards, ending up sprawled on the springy floor. With an evil laugh, Mello began to scale the slope himself, but before he could take more than a few steps he felt arms go around his waist from behind, dragging him away from it. From there, naturally, it degraded into a wrestling match made all the more fun by the unsteady floor and walls.

At last, when they were both worn out, the two simply lay there getting their breath back and laughing. Their several-minute struggle had ended in a draw of sorts, and, declaring a truce, they climbed to the summit of the slope and went tumbling and sliding down the other side before emerging from the end of the course.

"That was fun," Matt laughed as they started walking back to reclaim their shoes.

"Yeah," Mello agreed. He smirked. "Near probl'y thinks we died or something by now."

As they turned the corner and arrived back at the front, however, the white-haired boy was nowhere in sight.

"Oh, you're _kidding_ me," Mello groaned. "Where did he go? We were barely gone for five minutes!"

"You don't think…" Matt looked nervous. "That creepy guy?"

Mello's eyes widened. "Oh, hell, that had better not be it."

"Let's go look for him," Matt suggested. "If we come back without him, Watari'll kill us."

Mello nodded agreement and went to collect his shoes, muttering to himself as he did. "Stupid kid… can't believe we can't leave him on his own for _five minutes_…" He was annoyed. Really, really annoyed. That was the strange, clenching feeling in his stomach - obviously not fear, and certainly not worry.

It was nothing, however, compared to the annoyance he felt when they found Near calmly browsing through one of the crafts booths.

"What are you _doing?_" Mello snapped. "We thought you were dead! We thought that pervert got you or something!"

"I'm fine," Near told him calmly. "And I'm looking for a birthday present for Lawrence. That's why I wanted to come here in the first place."

Mello raised an eyebrow. "Who the hell is Law— oh." Obviously, it would be stupid to start talking about L with the owner of the crafts booth hovering near enough to overhear their conversation. "That Lawrence."

"Yes," Near agreed calmly. "But I haven't really found anything that fits."

Mello shrugged. "I usually just get him chocolate. But hey, you've got a whole month. That's plenty of time. You could even make him something; grownups love handmade stuff."

"That's a good point," Near admitted. "Perhaps we should go; I think we've seen most of what's here. At least that way we won't have to encounter that man who was following us again."

"Let's stay a few more minutes," Matt pleaded. "It's almost time for them to announce the winners of the estimation jar. C'mon, let's go see."

They were just in time - as they arrived, so did a tall, kindly-looking man dressed as a wizard. He spoke briefly with the volunteer who had been running the table, accepted a slip of paper, and smiled around at the assembled crowd.

"Well, there were lots of good guesses," he told them, "but the closest by far, and the winner of the estimation, was a Mister Neil Roberts! Is Mister Roberts here?"

Before Mello had a chance to wonder why he felt like he'd heard the name before, Near shuffled forward.

"That's me," he said calmly.

Oh. That's where he'd heard it before.

"There are three-thousand, one-hundred and sixteen pieces of candy corn in the jar," the man in the wizard costume was explaining, "so Neil's guess of three-thousand two-hundred was by far the closest." He smiled and patted Near on the shoulder. "Congratulations, Neil. Do you have someone with you to help you carry it home?"

Near frowned faintly in confusion. "Carry what home?"

"The jar of candy corn," the man said. "It's the prize. Are your parents here?"

"We're with him," Matt said quickly, stepping forward and pulling Mello with him. "Hey, Neil, nice job. Ready to go?" Near nodded, and the three started off towards the exit.

"Hey," Matt wondered as they emerged, "what are all those police cars doing in the parking lot?"

Mello shrugged. "Dunno; maybe something happened in a different part of the Fair. Let's just get home."

"You're eager to leave," Near remarked.

"Damn straight I am," Mello replied calmly. "I forgot to bring chocolate, and I haven't had any since before breakfast."

Matt sidled a half-step away.

As they sat on the curb half a block away, waiting for Watari to pick them up, Mello glanced over at Near and saw him smiling.

"You don't eat candy corn," he pointed out. "What's got you so pleased?"

Near's smiled widened. "I think," he decided, "that I just found a birthday present for L."


	3. October 7th

"No."

"Wow, he's good," Matt remarked. "How long have we been here, Mel? Two minutes? And already caught."

"He's not the world's greatest detective for nothing," Mello agreed.

L smiled. "I seem to have a sixth sense when it comes to you two and your escapades. Also, it wasn't particularly difficult to follow the trail of other students you so recently evicted."

"They were getting in the way," Mello explained. "We needed—"

"Mello, Matt, you are not going to turn the playroom into a haunted house."

"But—"

"No."

"Our plans, though!" Matt protested. "We had so many great ideas!"

"You two have rooms," L pointed out. "Rooms which you are entirely welcome to convert into whatever you wish, provided it's not dangerous and won't attract insects. You are also welcome to use the attic, which is unoccupied. But I'm afraid that the playroom belongs to all of the students here, and you cannot simply take it over."

"Well, we weren't sure how to cover the big windows anyway," Matt admitted.

"The attic would work," Mello agreed. "That would actually be really neat. There are a bunch of loose floorboards we could put dry ice under and stuff. And I'll bet we could do something wicked with the rafters…"

L smiled and backed out of the room quietly, leaving them to their plotting. He had several cases that needed his attention, and he was hoping to finish up some of the work by that night so that he would have time to spend with the children.

He was also hoping, quietly but fervently, that there was nobody on the planet actually stupid enough to sell Matt and Mello dry ice.

To his surprise, he ended up making even more progress on the cases than he'd expected over the course of the afternoon - and so it was with a clear conscience that, come dinnertime, he closed his laptop and let the pair of excited haunted-house designers that had just invaded his room grab an arm each and drag him away from his desk.

"Dinner first," he insisted gently. "Then you can show me. Come on; I won't be able to enjoy it properly if I know that you two are going hungry. I promise I'll see it right after." Still trailing a child from each arm, he made his way down the hallway, through the dining room, and into the kitchen - a warm, bright room which was always open and well-stocked, a fact almost every inhabitant of the House had discovered on late-night snack runs. Amos, the man who had worked as cook since the House's founding, was alternately stirring something on the stove and helping the smaller children to reach plates and serve themselves food while his niece Rachel, who acted as his assistant and always baked the children cakes on their birthdays, transferred chocolate chip cookies from a baking sheet to a large platter.

Fetching a plate from one of the stacks, L served himself fruit salad, marinated chicken, and rice (which he sprinkled liberally with sugar), then collected two of the still-warm cookies. By the time he'd found silverware and collected a glass of strawberry-banana juice, Matt and Mello were waiting for him.

The dining room had always been one of L's favorite places - and not just because it was often the site of dessert consumption. It was beautiful, paneled in warm wood and slightly multi-leveled - a horseshoe-shaped platform stretching around three of the walls was raised a few steps above the rest of the room, and on the fourth wall was an enormous window looking out over a small slope to the grounds behind the House. At this hour, the sun was setting, and the room was flooded with orange and golden light as happy chatter rose from the circular tables scattered around it.

L walked down the few steps to the lower floor and moved left to choose a table close to the window. Matt and Mello joined him, beginning to talk excitedly about their haunted house as soon as they were sitting down. L listened and smiled.

"But Watari wouldn't let us go into town to get smoke bombs," Mello was complaining.

Though L's first thought was _Thank God_, what he said instead was, "Why not?" He tapped his fork against his lips. "I presume it wasn't because you actually _told_ him that's what you wanted to get."

Matt shook his head. "Nah, we said it was for fake cobwebs. And then he said that none of us were allowed to go to town today because something happened there this morning. But he wouldn't say what, just that we couldn't go."

"That makes perfect sense," L said. "Something did happen this morning - or last night; they're not really sure. Do you know the big bell in the clock tower?"

"Yeah," Mello confirmed. Matt nodded.

"Somebody stole it," L explained. "And left a nursery rhyme in its place. It's being taken as a kind of threat against the town."

"A _nursery _rhyme?" Mello demanded skeptically. "And _that's_ why Watari wouldn't even let us go downtown? What rhyme was it anyway?"

L dug in his pocket and produced a folded piece of paper. "Are you familiar with 'Oranges and Lemons'?" he asked. "Each line rhymes a short phrase with the name of a church or cathedral; there are six named in the most common version of the song, and a number of alternate lines. The version left in the clock tower names ten churches." He unfolded the paper and passed it into the hands reaching for it. "This is a copy of the original rhyme. The paper received this morning adds Saint Margaret's, Saint Giles's, Saint Peter's, and Saint Anne's."

Eagerly, the two boys scanned the paper.

"_Oranges and lemons," say the bells of Saint Clement's_  
"_You owe me five farthings," say the bells of Saint Martin's_  
"_When will you pay me?" say the bells of Old Bailey_  
"_When I grow rich," say the bells of Shoreditch_  
"_When will that be?" say the bells of Stepney_  
"_I do not know," says the great bell of Bow_  
_Here comes a candle to light you to bed_  
_Here comes a chopper to chop off your head_  
_Chip chop, chip chop, the last man's dead_

Mello raised an eyebrow. "Nice nursery rhyme."

"There's a chance it's nothing more than a joke," L said. "After all, the theft of the bell is all that's happened. But I don't blame Watari for wanting to keep you away from town; it often pays to assume the worst."

Mello nodded, still scanning the paper. "Will you email me the version with the extra verses?" he asked. "There might be some kind of code; we should see if we can figure it out."

"Certainly," L smiled. "But first, eat your dinner. You too, Matt."

Reluctantly, Mello returned the paper, and within a few minutes, he and Matt had once more become engrossed in telling L about the construction of the haunted house. He listened obligingly, and after dinner, they dragged him up to the attic to show him their creation.

"Wait here," Mello instructed, leaving him at the top of the staircase to dart up through the trapdoor, Matt right behind him. L waited.

A minute or two later, a spooky voice intoned, "_Come in_" and he pushed up the trapdoor and climbed up into the project from which he had saved the playroom earlier. They'd really done a good job, he thought - there were dark-colored sheets hanging from the rafters, creating a sort of maze, and they'd arranged fake cobwebs, lights tinted by covers of colored cellophane, and some source of eerie sound effects. They'd added other touches, too - L particularly liked the piece of glass in front of which was a white light and behind which were two tiny red ones, such that it acted as a mirror which gave him glowing red eyes when he looked into it from the right angle. He paused a moment to wonder where they'd gotten a sheet of glass, then decided that perhaps he didn't really want to know.

When he reached the end of the ersatz maze, he pretended to be surprised when Matt jumped out at him - then really was startled when Mello somehow managed to drop from the ceiling.

"I'm impressed," he told them with a smile. "This is a lot for an afternoon's worth of work. Where did you get the strobe light?"

"Oh, that," Matt mused. "We found it in—"

He paused as, all of a sudden, there was the sound of static and the sound effects went silent.

"What was that?" Mello frowned. "Did your computer break or something, Matt?" Matt shrugged in response, and the three listened for a moment before realizing that the silence wasn't complete - across the room, very softly, was the sound of someone breathing.

"Who's there?" Mello called nervously, instinctively moving closer to L as Matt did similarly. L frowned faintly, wondering if it could be—

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound effect of a chainsaw revving, followed a split second later by a pair of ear-splitting screams as two sets of hands grabbed for L's arms. Sighing, he attempted to find the light-switch with a terrified child clinging to each elbow and a sudden new insight into their late night "Mario Kart" marathons. L was pretty sure Bowser didn't use a chainsaw.

Once he finally got the lights on, it took another few minutes to coax them over to investigate Matt's computer - and when they finally found it, there was a message on the screen.

_Dear Mello and Matt,_

_Thank you for sneaking down to the basement and turning off all the electricity in the building the night we watched 'Psycho'. Thank you also for waiting until I was in the shower to do so. It was a truly memorable experience._

_Love,_

_Near_


	4. October 10th

_Tierfal and I made up the other Wammy Kids who show up in this one, because three plus Linda wasn't enough for a whole fic set at Wammy's House. XDD And I promise, the mystery will really get into swing in a couple chapters. ;)  
_

* * *

_Oranges and lemons…_

"Mel?"

_Letters and numbers…_

"Hey, Mel?"

_Bells and cathedrals and rhymes and mysteries…_

"Mello, wake up!"

"Huh?" Dazedly, the blond boy shook himself awake, and the world swam back into focus. He was curled in his computer chair, L's email open on the screen and a notebook and pencil before him, the desk littered with chocolate wrappers and scraps of paper covered in dead-end attempts to draw some sort of code out of the rhyme - arrangements of the letters, results of changing them into numbers, different ways the lines could be organized, notes on the possible meanings of the phrases and the histories of the cathedrals mentioned, grids for codes that hadn't appeared as of yet…

Blearily, he glanced up to see Matt looking down at him.

"Hey," he managed wearily.

Matt smiled. "Hey. Want to take a break from that?"

Mello shook his head. "I can't stop now. I feel like I'm just about to figure out part of it."

"That's what you said yesterday," Matt pointed out. "C'mon, it was probably just a prank or something. There probably _isn't_ any kind of code in it."

"Or we just haven't found one yet," Mello insisted.

Matt was silent a moment. Then he said, "You know, you don't have to find some kind of message in this to prove that you're smart. You already are. I know that. L knows that, too. Everyone does."

Mello sighed. "It just seems like there must be _something_."

"Maybe there is," Matt admitted. "But that doesn't mean that we have all the pieces to the puzzle. Maybe there's something we're missing. And anyway, you're going crazy over this; maybe you should take a break."

Mello didn't want to give up, but he had to admit the possibility that his friend was right.

"C'mon, Mel," Matt was coaxing. "Just put it away for now and come do something fun. Everyone else is; they've got a campfire outside and Watari's telling ghost stories." He took ahold of one of Mello's hands and started tugging gently. Reluctantly, Mello allowed himself to be pulled out of his chair and towards the door.

"If L was trying to solve a code, though…" he began, glancing back at his desk.

"He'd take breaks," Matt insisted, continuing to pull his friend along. "Come on; L is out there with everyone else. They're roasting marshmallows. It'll be _fun._"

The last of Mello's resolve broke, and he allowed himself to be dragged down the stairs, out the back door, and across the lawn to where a number of the House's inhabitants were gathered around the fire pit, sitting on chairs, logs, and blankets, wrapped up in warm clothing. L had four or five children in his lap and clinging to his arms, and Watari was seated on a stump in front of the fire, just finishing a story.

"And so they returned to the house with the townspeople, convinced that they were going to be proven right. As they got closer, however, they began to doubt their own memories - they saw no house, and, when they arrived, there was nothing but a burnt-out shell overgrown by years of neglect." He paused and took the opportunity to look around at the children. Mello followed suit and saw Near struggling valiantly to stay awake under a pile of blankets, Alex watching Watari, hands on his omnipresent Rubik's cube stilled for once, and Kat listening raptly and wide-eyed while Quicksilver set marshmallows on fire. Mello dropped into a free spot, and Matt joined him moments later.

"However," Watari continued quietly, everyone's attention focused intently on him by now, "while exploring the wreckage, convinced by now that they'd fallen asleep in the woods and had dreamed up their mysterious hosts of the night before, they found something unusual - on the table, gleaming against the soot and the ruin, was the new, shiny silver coin they'd left in that exact spot earlier that morning."

Silence for a moment. Then…

"How did it get there?" Kat breathed.

"That's the mystery," Watari explained. "That the house they'd stayed at had actually been abandoned for years."

"But then who were the people they talked to?" Kat demanded.

Watari shrugged. "Whoever you imagine them to be."

"I'll bet they were ghosts," Quicksilver said confidently. "The guys who stayed with them were lucky they didn't get eaten."

"Not all ghosts eat people," Fiona protested from across the circle. "Maybe they were friendly ghosts. You know, the kind that help people."

"Or the mischievous kind," Quicksilver agreed. "The kind that like to play tricks on people just for fun. Like Gastly." She nodded assuredly. Meanwhile, Near seemed to have fallen asleep at last, and Alex was working on his Rubik's cube again, fingers whirling away at the patterns that always seemed to be so clear to him.

"Tell us another story," Mello begged. Watari seemed to know so many - and they were always just scary enough to make you shiver but not so frightening that you couldn't sleep at night. In other words, perfect.

The elderly gentleman smiled. "All right. This one comes all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, from Mexico, and tells about a legendary monster." He paused to give everyone a chance to listen, and Mello shifted closer to Matt, shivering partly from the cold and partly from anticipation. A moment later, he felt his best friend wrap a blanket around both of them, and they curled up happily against the autumn chill as Watari began the story.

Eventually, as the setting of the tales passed from Africa to Japan to Russia to India (because Watari always knew stories from _everywhere_), as the moon climbed towards the summit of the sky (full and bright and as silvery-white as Near, though probably a warm orange harvest moon through Matt's goggles), as the campfire crackled and the autumn wind mingled the smell of October with the smell of woodsmoke and they roasted marshmallows (Mello always managed to scald his, but that was all right because Matt liked them burnt and would trade him) - a feeling of peace settled, and Mello stopped worrying about rhymes and codes and bells.

_They can wait,_ he thought drowsily to himself.

Ten minutes later, he and Matt were both soundly and happily asleep.


	5. October 13th

"Shh, Matt, get down!" Mello grabbed his friend's arm, pulling both of them down to crouch behind a sofa as soft footsteps crossed the doorway and proceeded down the hall. After waiting for them to turn the corner, Mello grabbed Matt's arm and dragged him across the room, out the door, and in the opposite direction that their pursuer had gone. They were engaged in a precarious game of cat and mouse - a frantic flight from a clever hunter - a desperate struggle to survive—

—also known as "Hide and Seek".

Of course, Wammy's House didn't play entirely ordinary Hide and Seek. A number of extra rules provided the opportunity for countless alliances and betrayals - in particular, one that allowed sixty seconds after being captured to track down another player in exchange for freedom. Otherwise, L (who was almost silent in bare feet and therefore extremely good at sneaking up unexpectedly) would take the children he'd found down to the kitchen, where Watari was waiting with hot chocolate and riddles to solve in exchange for a chance to return to the game. When they were young, Matt and Mello had enjoyed being caught and carried downstairs in fits of giggles, but now, Mello was determined that they were going to go unfound.

"This way," he instructed quietly, leading Matt towards the back door and the darkness of the grounds.

"We're going outside?" Matt asked uncertainly. "Isn't that off-limits?"

"Come on, Matt. L's the one who always says that you win by figuring out the rules and then using them to your advantage."

"So we're going to cheat at Hide and Seek."

"We're not going to _cheat_," Mello scoffed. "We'll go back inside soon. We're just going to pay Fee and her pals back for that dirty trick they played on you earlier with the perfume."

"How?" Matt asked, beginning to be interested.

"While she was busy teasing you," Mello explained, "I dropped my cell phone into her purse. She has so much crap in there she'll never notice. And if we go over near the greenhouse, we'll be able to see most of the traffic in the corridors on this side of the house through the windows and call it when L's in the same area as them."

"You'll have a better view from the edge of the lake," Near murmured. "And you're less likely to be seen there."

Mello spun around. "Since when were you with us?" he demanded. Near shrugged innocently, and the blond boy rolled his eyes.

"Well, you'd better come with us. We don't want you tattling on where we are if L catches you. C'mon, let's get into the trees so we can't be seen." Hurriedly, the three boys made their way across the damp lawn and towards the lake.

"It's cold out here," Near murmured as they reached the safety of the trees. Mello sighed.

"Why'd you follow us, then?"

Once again, Near shrugged. "Are we just going to wait here until we see them?"

"You bet we are." Determinedly, Mello selected a spot on a rock by the lake's edge from which he could see the windows of the upstairs corridors. The night breeze blowing across the lake _was_ rather cold, and the yellow light within the House looked rather inviting, but he wasn't going to give up. Matt settled on the rock next to him, and Near perched on a smaller one, lifting a finger to twirl into his hair.

"There are easier ways to get revenge," he pointed out.

Mello didn't reply, but Matt looked partially swayed.

"We could probably see where they were if we hid somewhere inside," the redhead pointed out. "It's cold. And besides, it's creepy out here at night. What if monsters—"

"Matt, this isn't Silent Hill. There are no monsters."

"Now I know what it is you've been playing in secret late at night," Near mused quietly. Mello glared at him.

"You already knew damn well what we were playing, Mister Computer Hacker."

Near shrugged. "Aren't you the one sitting outside in the middle of the night to prove that revenge is worth putting effort into?"

Mello didn't deign to respond. Instead, he remarked, "I heard that the lake is haunted."

"Haunted?" Matt demanded, wide-eyed. Near raised a pale eyebrow.

"Yeah," Mello said. "Years ago, a kid drowned himself in it, and because they never pulled out the body, his ghost is supposed to be still here."

"That's not true." Matt sounded slightly unsure of himself.

"It is," Mello replied. "He was one of the first kids studying here, but it was too much stress, so on Halloween night he came down to the lake and drowned himself. His body's still down there. And if you stand on the shore and say his name with your fingers crossed, then on the thirty-first, he comes to get you."

"Don't say it," Matt whimpered. Mello smiled daringly.

"Don't worry," he assured his friend. "I'm not scared." He got to his feet and stood facing the lake, lifting both hands to cross his fingers. "His name—"

"_Don't!_" Matt pleaded.

"—was A."

There was silence. Then, a moment later, they heard a faint splash, followed by a soft moan.

Before Mello even had time to think, he and Matt were clinging to each other, terrified. Even Near looked shaken, but he pointed a thin finger a little ways along the shore to a thicker patch of trees.

"It didn't come from the lake," he murmured. "It came from the well."

"What if the kid's coming out of it?" Matt wailed quietly. "Like in—"

"Shh!" Mello hissed furiously. After the prank with Matt's computer, Near didn't need to know that it was equally easy to scare them with televisions and phones. "It was probably just an animal or something. C'mon, let's go look." He grabbed onto Matt's hand - only to _give_ comfort, he told himself - and led the way, trying to look more confident than he felt. The three gathered around the old well, stepped past the crumbling stones that had fallen from the edges, and glanced down, hearts pounding.

A little girl with wide eyes and straggly wet hair was looking back up at them.

Matt and Mello gave a collective scream of terror, and, dragging Near with them, made a mad dash away. Halfway across the lawn, though, they stopped, gasping for breath, all shaking.

"That wasn't the girl from the movie," Matt said, panting. "It was Kat."

"I know," Mello said. He took a deep breath. "We have to get help; she must've fallen or something. Matt, go get L. Near, find Watari. I'll…" he swallowed. "I'll go back and tell her they're coming."

Matt nodded and disappeared in the direction of the House, already shouting for help as he flew through the door, and Near headed for the staircase that led towards the kitchen. Nervously, Mello returned to the edge of the well and peered over.

"Kat?" he called. The seven-year-old in question looked back up at him from the damp depths, arms wrapped around herself against the cold.

"Help," she begged, tears threatening her voice.

"Matt and Near went to get help," Mello promised. "They'll be back soon. How did you get down there?"

"I don't remember," the girl sniffled helplessly.

"Are you sure? Were you trying to hide?"

Kat hiccoughed and rubbed at her eyes. "I don't _know_," she wailed softly. "Mello, help me, please!"

"L's coming," Mello promised frantically. "And so is Watari. They'll be here soon, I promise." He looked up towards the House and felt a surge of relief as he saw the elderly gentleman striding across the lawn with a rope and a blanket and L coming down the stairs with a lantern.

Mello's two friends rejoined him, and Watari lost no time in lowering what Mello now saw was a kind of sling down into the darkness while L held the lantern above the opening.

"Climb into this," Watari instructed gently, "and hold on tight. I'll pull you out." A moment later, he was lifting the rope hand over hand, and it wasn't long before the frightened little girl emerged from the well and was bundled into another blanket in his arms.

"I called the infirmary on the way down," L said quietly. "You can bring her straight there; I'll take care of these three." Watari nodded and disappeared, and Mello, Matt, and Near clustered worriedly around their mentor.

"What happened?" Mello demanded.

"I was hoping you might know," L admitted, letting small hands claim each of his own and crouching down to allow Near to climb onto his back. "Was she with you when she fell down?" He straightened up again and began walking back towards the house.

Mello shook his head. "No, we just found her."

"Will she be all right?" Matt asked nervously.

"She should be," L replied gently. "It's very lucky that you three found her and came to get help so quickly. You did a very good job."

Mello smiled. Together, the four made their way back up to the house - first to Near's room, because he was already dozing off latched onto L's back, and then to the infirmary. When they arrived, Kat was in a bed at the far end of the room, wrapped in blankets and sipping at a mug of cocoa, and Watari was standing by the door, looking worried. He drew L aside immediately, and Mello and Matt followed, curious and nervous.

"I just got a call from the chief of police," Watari reported in a low voice. "The bell's been returned."

L frowned faintly in thought. "And?"

"The clapper's still missing. In its place is another piece of paper, with the words 'Ding, dong, bell.'"

L's face darkened.

"Isn't that the start of another nursery rhyme?" Matt ventured hesitantly. "One about—"

"Yes," L said grimly. "It is, Matt. One about a cat down a well."


	6. October 15th

"Hurry up, Matt."

"I'm almost done!" the redhead protested. "I just have to kill ten more polygons—"

Mello relaxed.

"—and then I'll get to Master Hand."

"_Matt!_ We have to _go!_ If we don't leave soon, we're not going to be able to find our costumes and get back before curfew!"

Matt snorted slightly. "Since when do you care about getting back by curfew?"

Mello frowned. "This one's serious," he insisted. "Because of what happened to Kat. Watari said that they're going to do a head-count at sunset, and if we're not back by then, he's going to come get us himself."

Matt sighed. "Fine. I've already got the trophy anyway." He snapped off the power on the console. "Why are you so worried about finding costumes pieces, anyway? All of your clothing is black. All you need is something to cover your face."

"And gloves," Mello said. "Ninjas wear gloves."

Matt shrugged. "I guess. Too bad L said you couldn't have a katana, though."

For a moment, Mello's face fell. "Yeah, I know. And he said no throwing stars, either, unless we make them out of tinfoil."

"Well," Matt remarked, "maybe we can make you some nunchuks out of dowels and key rings or something."

Mello's eyes lit up.

It took them a few minutes to collect jackets and get out the door, and then there was the walk into town. Once they arrived, they headed straight for the closest thrift store. Some of the other children liked to buy costumes from Halloween stores, but Mello and Matt preferred assembling their own for two main reasons - one, it was fun and original, and two (the important one), less pocket money spent on costumes meant more for chocolate and video games. So it was that every Halloween, they would scour the thrift stores for costume pieces and assemble their own outfits.

"You can just wear your shirt with the red and black stripes," Mello was saying. "But what we should do is get you some beat-up jeans and then cut up the cuffs to make 'em look pirate-y. Plus then you can wear striped socks and they'll show."

"I need some kind of scarf for my head, too," Matt pointed out. "And I wonder if we could find a fake earring."

"Probably," Mello said. "We can look through the jewelry and stuff; there might be clip-on ones or something. C'mon." He led the way determinedly into the depths of the store.

The expedition went quite well - Matt's jeans were secured, as were a black bandana, a small stuffed parrot, and a belt with a large gold buckle, as well as a pair of clip-on gold hoop earrings. Mello, meanwhile, managed to find a black ski mask that he deemed satisfactory and several pairs of gloves that were much too large.

"Maybe they'd shrink in the wash?" he suggested.

"Mello, you could fit both hands into _one_ of those gloves," Matt said. "We don't have to find everything here."

In the end, they left the gloves behind and gathered up their other purchases before heading for the checkout.

"Where to next?" Matt asked cheerfully.

"The Halloween store," Mello decided. "I need gloves, and I'll bet we can find you a plastic cutlass or something, too. Besides, they'll have chocolate."

"That's the real reason you want to go, isn't it?"

"No, it isn't."

"Yeah, Mel, it is."

"Yeah, well, your _face._"

Bickering happily, the two continued down the street to the large store on the corner, where ghosts, witches, and pumpkins ushered them through a door hung with orange and black streamers and into the strange paradox of a large, clean building filled with plastic semblances of ruin and decay. Mello headed straight for the section flanked by skeletons.

"I thought we were here to get gloves and pirate stuff," Matt said.

"We are," Mello replied. "But I want to look at the masks." He led the way into an aisle filled with fake weapons and other frightening-looking accessories, with black fabric hung over it to create a kind of tunnel at the end of which was a rack of masks ranging from creepy to gory.

"I don't like clowns," Matt decided, examining a group with rubber noses and evil smiles.

"Nobody likes clowns," Mello replied absently, "because they're creepy as hell. Ooh, this one's good." Matt looked up to see his friend holding a rather ugly skull mask covered in a thin layer of hard plastic and with what appeared to be narrow tubes attached to each corner.

"Watch," Mello suggested, squeezing a small hand pump attached to the tubes. In response, fake blood squirted out into the layer between the mask and the plastic and began to run down the skull's face.

"That's gross," Matt laughed.

"Exactly," Mello smirked. "Which is why I'm going to buy it."

"You already have a costume," Matt pointed out.

"I know," Mello said. "This is to get back at Near for that trick with the computer."

Matt raised an eyebrow. "With a scary mask? That's surprisingly simple for you."

"No, not with the _mask_," Mello scoffed. "We'll ditch the mask, hide in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, and stick the tubing up into the pipeline so that when he washes his hands, we can make blood bubble up the drain."

Matt grinned. "Watari'll kill us."

"It'll be worth it," Mello assured him, turning to start back the way they'd come. "Trust—"

He froze.

At the other end of the aisle, watching them silently, was a man in a hooded black cloak and a grim reaper mask - _the_ man in the grim reaper mask, the same one they'd seen at the fair.

Mello heard Matt whimper softly beside him and reached for the redhead's arm, catching his sleeve.

"Come on," he said quietly and unsteadily. "Let's check out the stuff on the other end of the store."

"Okay," Matt quavered.

Trying to ignore the painful pounding of his heart in his chest, Mello turned slowly and began walking towards the other end of the aisle. When they emerged, he grabbed Matt's wrist and dragged him at a half-hurry, half-run past several aisles before ducking into one and starting back towards the center of the store, completing the third side of a square. Once out in the open, they headed for the register.

"Someone at home will have black gloves," Mello mumbled. "And we can make you a sword out of cardboard and tinfoil."

"Sounds good," Matt agreed quickly. "C'mon, let's get out of here."

"Agreed." Mello grabbed a bar of chocolate and dropped it and the mask onto the checkout counter. While the cashier was ringing them up, he risked a glance back over his shoulder.

The grim reaper man was just emerging from the aisle they'd last been through.

When they got out of the shop, it took all of Mello's self-control not to run.

"Let's go home," Matt pleaded.

"We have to act natural," Mello murmured in reply.

"Mello, he's following us! He's coming out of the store! Let's call Watari, please!"

"We can't," Mello gritted. "If we make it seem like a big deal he'll think it _is_ one and get the idea that we're in constant danger or something."

"But he's _looking_ at us! He's looking at _you!_ It's getting dark out, what if—"

Mello squeezed his eyes shut, grabbed Matt's hand, and ran. He didn't look behind them to see whether or not the man was still following - only after they'd dashed through the wrought-iron gates and into the safety of the House did he finally gather up the courage to look back along the lane, only to discover that there was no sign of their frightening pursuer. Orange afternoon was beginning to fade to indigo evening, it was getting cold out, and both of them were flushed, sweating, and breathing in panting almost-sobs.

They were safe now. They had to be. They must be.

That night, Mello didn't even try to fall asleep in his own bed. Instead, he crawled into the familiar haven of his best friend's - and, as they curled up together and began to doze quietly, he tried to convince himself that everything was going to be all right.


	7. October 19th

_Oh noes, posted at the last minute! XDD This chapter marks the start of a shift towards L's point of view - but the kids will still be around plenty. :)  
_

* * *

"Matt, hold still!"

"Sorry." The redhead attempted to stop squirming and keep his arm in one place. "It just tickles."

"Just be glad it's not a real tattoo," Mello remarked, biting his tongue and attempting to maneuver the colored marker carefully. "I'll bet those hurt. There." He put the finishing touch on his work of art and sat back. "Don't pull your sleeve down until it's dried or it'll smear."

"Okay," Matt agreed happily. "Is that everything?"

Mello nodded. "I think so. I just need my mask." Crossing to the dresser, he collected the black ski mask the two had bought the other day and began trying to get it on while holding his hair out of his face. Matt, meanwhile, commenced blowing on his arm in order to make his "tattoo" dry faster.

"Done," Mello announced. "Let's go." He turned, decked from head to toe in black, the only part of him visible the blue eyes peeking through his mask.

"I wonder what Near's dressed as," Matt wondered as they started downstairs. Mello shrugged.

"Dunno. He might not be wearing anything; they didn't say you had to dress up for the party. We're just doing it 'cause we're badass like that. Near's probably in his pajamas like he always is." Mello scowled. "Hell, we still owe him revenge for that trick with the computer."

"Yeah, it's too bad L caught us setting up the thing with the drain," Matt agreed. "We'll be in big trouble if we try it again."

"We can't try it again anyway," Mello frowned, "since he confiscated the stupid mask. Now we'll have to think of something else."

"We'll think of something," Matt encouraged. "Besides, it's not like we have to do it at the party or anything. Or like we can - L and Watari will be there."

As it turned out, he was half-right. When they arrived in the dining room - which had been specially decorated for the occasion and had many of the tables moved out of the way - L was sitting and decorating cookies and cupcakes with several of the younger children, and Watari was nowhere in sight.

"Are any of these chocolate?" Mello asked as he and Matt sat down on the other side of the food-decorating station. Their mentor looked up from the cookie he was adorning with his gothic L and smiled.

"Certainly," he assured them. "I think they're in one of Near's stacks; he's been kind enough to organize them for us." Sure enough, a white-sheeted ghost with holes cut for large gray eyes grew a small hand that carefully pushed a tower of cookies towards the blond boy.

"If you're interested," L added, "once you're done here, Amos has set up a bobbing for apples station. And there are Halloween-themed board games and such spread out all along the floor by the window."

"That sounds neat," Mello said, looking rather distracted by his attempts to draw what looked like an evil, fanged face on his cookie. L couldn't quite tell, because it was a chocolate cookie, and he was using chocolate syrup. He was just about to ask after it when his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the front screen before flipping it open.

"What is it, Watari?"

"Someone from the police force wants to talk to you when you have a moment," Watari explained. "It's that detective who was looking into the bell and the rhymes."

"Oh, yes," L recalled. "Detective Morgan. Please tell her I'll be with her shortly; I'll be at my computer in a few minutes."

"Is that about the thing with the rhymes?" Mello demanded as soon as he'd hung up. "Do you have any leads on it yet?"

L smiled. "We haven't made much progress, but one of the police detectives has been looking into some things for me, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to figure something out. I'll let you know if any more rhymes show up, all right?" Mello nodded eagerly, and Matt looked up from the cupcake he was decorating to look like a one-up mushroom.

"Are you going to come back to the party?" the red-haired boy wanted to know.

"I'll do my best," L assured him. "It shouldn't take too long to find out what Detective Morgan knows, and then I'll try to make it back here. All right?" Matt nodded, and L smiled and ruffled his hair before standing, gently detaching another child from his left arm, and making his way out of the dining hall and up to his room, where his laptop was waiting.

"Detective Morgan?" he asked as soon as he'd opened the connection to the laptop down at police headquarters. Because the station was the one local to the orphanage, its members had a secret but permanent means of communication with Wammy's House - however, like everyone else, they saw nothing but the letter on the screen and heard L's voice through a scrambler. L, on the other hand, could see and hear them quite clearly, and he focused on the short red-haired woman sitting in a chair in front of the camera.

"Yes?" she replied, looking up at the screen. "Would you like to hear what I've found?"

"I would be very grateful to," L confirmed. "Is there anything that could link the crimes to a suspect?"

"I'm afraid not," the detective replied. "Whoever did it was careful not to leave any kind of evidence on the bell or around the tower, and you said that an examination of your own grounds revealed nothing about who might have been responsible for the girl falling down the well."

"It is unlikely she fell," L corrected. "She was uninjured; it seems much more probable that she was somehow lowered down or placed inside."

"With what purpose, do you think?" the woman asked, sounding faintly concerned. "Do you think whoever it was intended to kill her? You said that it was only lucky chance that she was found so quickly."

"Yes, but considering how well-planned everything else seems to have been, it is quite possible that the perpetrator intended for it to happen that way. What concerns me most is the rhymes - so far, they seem to be nothing but random threats - whether or not they are connected to actual crimes, the fact that there is not yet any apparent meaning suggests to me that more are planned."

"Jeff was saying that," Morgan reported. "Detective Anderson, I mean. He helped me research some of them, and he was saying that these are probably just the first warnings to something bigger. We made you a list of other popular rhymes that includes any places around town similar to locations mentioned in the rhymes; is it all right if I send it to you?"

"Yes, thank you," L confirmed. "Have you managed to turn up anything else?"

Detective Morgan shook her head. "No, but rest assured, we'll keep trying. In the meantime, I'd warn against letting your children wander around alone, especially at night."

"Thank you for the suggestion, Detective; we've already seen to that."

"All right then. I'm sorry I don't have more for you yet - Detective Anderson and I are going to go take another look at the bell tower tomorrow, in case something was missed before, and I'll let you know right away if we find anything."

"Thank you," L said. "I'll keep in touch." He cut the connection, then sat back in his chair and sighed. Someone out there was planning something, and all he had were the ends of a few threads which seemed to slip out of his grasp every time he tried to see how they wove together - and a host of uncertain fears.

He didn't even want to think about the implications of the fact that all the threats so far had been worded as rhymes for children.


	8. October 22nd

_My apologies for the fact that there seem to be a lot more questions than answers right now. XDD I can promise you that in a couple chapters, there will be some serious action, some serious explanation, and some serious thickening of the plot. ;)_

_

* * *

_"L, it's Detective Morgan for you."

Blearily, L opened his eyes and lifted his face from the pillow. He didn't like waking up to things that needed his attention - he always felt his most vulnerable in this half-state between sleep and waking, which was one of the reasons he didn't like to sleep when people could see him. Giving up consciousness was a frightening prospect. However, this morning, there was nobody in the room but Watari and the computer, which wasn't yet connected to the police station.

Rubbing his eyes, L stumbled out of bed, climbed into the desk chair, and hit the key to answer the call.

"Detective Morgan?" he mumbled, glad that the voice-changer would hide it.

"We've received another puzzle," the red-haired woman on the screen reported. "But Jeff - Detective Anderson - and I have been at it all night, and we can't figure it out for the life of us. So we sent it on to you, just in case you're better at that sort of thing."

L raised an eyebrow, curious now, and glanced over at Watari. Obligingly, the elderly gentleman hefted a rather large cardboard box onto the table. Standing, L opened the top and peered inside.

"Oh, my."

"Oh, my is right," Detective Anderson grumbled through the computer. "I doubt there's a human being alive who could solve that. They don't all fit together, either; at least we don't think so. Most of them are probably extraneous."

"That would make sense," L agreed. "It would also make it significantly more difficult to solve. Are we sure that this isn't just some kind of joke?"

The woman shook her head. "When the box arrived, the missing bell clapper was buried at the bottom."

"Ah. Very well, then. I'll see what I can do. Actually, I do think I know someone who might be able to solve this."

"Some kind of expert?" Morgan asked curiously.

L smiled. "Something like that. I'll let you know what we find." He hung up, then turned to his companion.

"Watari, do you think you could find Near, please?"

Watari nodded and disappeared, and L set to work clearing the floor of the room, rolling the rug back to expose the flat, hardwood surface below. As he was finishing and attempting to sweep away some of the accumulated dust, Watari returned with Near shuffling behind him, one hand raised to twirl a lock of pale hair around and around his finger. He looked down at the floor, then up at his mentor questioningly.

L smiled and placed the box in front of him.

"The police can't make head or tail of this," he reported. "Do you think you can do it?"

The white-haired boy leaned forward and peered into the box - which was filled, completely and utterly, with otherwise blank puzzle pieces sporting random black marks.

His eyes lit up. "Yes."

"Excellent," L smiled. "I've cleared you some space; should it be enough?"

Near nodded, already sitting down and lifting handfuls of puzzle pieces out onto the ground. Seeking to help him, L knelt down and tilted the box so that he could scoop them out. A landslide followed - there must have been thousands upon thousands of them, all tiny, all white except for apparently random marks. Immediately, Near began sorting them.

"Is there anything we can do to help?" L asked. Near considered for a moment.

"If I had some help sorting out the edges and the corners," he finally admitted, "it might go more quickly. Once those are in separate piles, I can start trying to put together sides."

"All right," L agreed. Crouching down, he began to sort pieces. Watari smiled.

"I'll bring you two some breakfast," he volunteered.

Eight hours later, L's usefulness as a helper had been long since spent, and he was sitting at his computer working on a different case, occasionally glancing over to watch Near fitting puzzle pieces together with impressive speed. Judging by the frame of the puzzle he was assembling and the size of the pile, there were indeed at least ten times as many pieces as were necessary for the actual puzzle. L could see discarded islands, made up of nonsense-fields of lines, where groups had fit together - but if the vague letters taking shape were anything to go by, Near had found the true object of the puzzle.

At around seven-o-clock, as the puzzle was drawing close to completion, Watari brought two dinner trays up. L accepted his gratefully, but Near set his aside, searching through his numerous piles of pieces for the last few he was missing. At last, he seemed to discover them, and, after slotting them into their spaces, the puzzle was done.

Near sat back, and L stood up and circled to his side to read the message.

_MARY HAD A_  
_LITTLE LAMB_

That was it. No drawings, no symbols, no direct message - just the beginning to another nursery rhyme. But at least it was something.

"You did a great job, Near," L smiled. "I don't think I could have put that together in a week - or maybe ever - and the police were completely stumped. They're not going to believe me when I tell them that you did it in under twelve hours."

Near smiled.

Once they'd eaten and Near had disappeared in the direction of his room to do homework, L called the police station back.

"You were correct about the extraneous pieces," he told Detective Morgan. "The message on the significant part of the puzzle is 'Mary had a little lamb'."

Her eyes widened. "Don't tell me you solved it already?"

"I didn't," L said. "One of the children has a particular aptitude for puzzles, and he's fond of blank ones. He put it together extremely quickly."

"Well, we owe him our thanks," Morgan replied, still looking slightly shocked. "He must have some kind of puzzle-wiring in his brain; that's amazing."

"He does like them a great deal," L reported with a smile. "Toys seem to help him think. If you ever need an expert on plastic robots, we could ask him about that, too."

Detective Morgan laughed. "I'll keep that in mind. Meanwhile, do you have any idea what the words mean?"

L shook his head, even though he knew she couldn't see him. "None yet. However, the presence of the bell clapper worries me. There aren't any other pieces of the bell left to be returned, which suggests to me that the culprit is through with sending us clues, and that we're about to see the culmination of them."

Morgan shrugged. "Well, if we can't figure out what he or she is hinting at, I suppose we'll just have to do our best to be ready for whatever hell may be preparing to break loose."

L didn't like the sound of that at all.


	9. October 24th

_Please forgive me for the facts that this chapter is (a) short and (b) largely filler - I've had midterms this week, and I've somehow managed to injure my right hand so that typing is painful, and other myriad excuses that don't matter. XDD But I promise that you will have the action-y chapter on Sunday, whether I have to type one-handed or what. XDD_

* * *

L had, during his albeit short correspondence with her, always found Kathleen Morgan to be a rather blunt and forthright person who wasn't worried about saying what she thought was the truth - which was why it concerned him slightly that she was hesitating over whatever she was about to tell him, having called him a few minutes ago to report on the case's progress and so far not really conveyed much at all.

"We haven't been able to make much headway investigating from the bell and puzzle direction," she explained.

There was a pause.

"So?" L prompted, wondering somewhat impatiently what she was leading up to.

"It seems," she said slowly, "as though the perpetrator has not only been able to get into your grounds, but has done so enough times to gain some information about the institution - at the very least, that girl's name, and possibly more."

"A surveillance system is out of the question," L put in calmly. "Far too easily accessible by malicious parties, no matter how well-protected we made it."

"That's not what I was suggesting," Detective Morgan corrected quickly. "What I meant is that we might be wise to investigate anybody who would have had access to the grounds and information. After all, you and the children aren't the only ones living there."

L bristled faintly. "My staff is trustworthy."

"Has there been anyone working there in that past that isn't anymore? How many people are there now?"

"I don't know that you should even have this information," L replied coolly, "but there are three former employees who are now working elsewhere - a nurse and two teachers. And, besides Watari and myself, there are eleven adults here now, every one of whom I would trust with my life."

Detective Morgan looked at the camera quietly for a moment. "Would you trust them with the children's lives?"

L paused, paused again to hate himself, and sighed.

"I'll give you the information on the past employees, and I'll look into the present ones myself."

"It's quite possible that none of them are at all guilty," Morgan said. "But it's also quite possible that one of them has been the unwitting source of an information leak."

"I know," L replied quietly.

"We've tried to figure out the latest clue," she put in, seeming to sense that it was time to change the topic. "We haven't come up with much, but I wanted to check - none of the children there happen to be named Mary, do they?"

L shook his head. "No, we don't have a Mary. If we did, I would have told you when I gave you the message from the puzzle."

"I thought I'd check anyway," Morgan sighed. "Oh, speaking of the puzzle, did the package we sent arrive?"

"Yes," L smiled. "Near was very grateful. It was kind of you to think of him."

"It was Jeff's idea," Morgan admitted. "We wanted to do something to thank him for all that work he did to help us. And you said he liked toy robots."

"Yes, he liked this one very much; he's been taking it everywhere with him."

Detective Morgan laughed. "I'll tell my brother. Well, half-brother. He's the one who picked it out - he's staying with me for a few weeks, and so he's been going through all the old stuff he left in boxes in my attic, and when I mentioned robots, he said he had one."

"You two grew up in the house you live in now?" L surmised.

She paused. "What - oh, the stuff in the attic. No, I grew up with my mother, and Sam grew up with our father and my stepmother in the United States, but we ended up writing letters to each other and became close, even though I'm a good decade older than him." She hesitated. "So when he dropped out of college and went to prison, he asked if I'd store his stuff for him, and I said yes."

"Ah," L remarked delicately.

"He's a good kid," Morgan insisted. "He got out early just a couple months ago, and now he's staying with me while he finds a place to live."

"I'm sure he's a good kid," L reassured her - though it felt slightly strange to use the word "kid", considering that Sam Morgan was probably older than L himself. "I didn't mean to pry into your family history."

"It's all right," his correspondent said. "I'll let you know if we find anything else."

"Thank you," L replied.

Just as he pressed the button to disconnect the call, Watari burst into the room. L was on his feet after one look at the man's face.

"What is it?" he prompted worriedly and insistently. "Another crime?"

Watari shook his head. "No, worse. Mello's and Matt's latest scheme."

"Dear God." L closed his eyes. "Do I even want to know?"

"No," Watari said. "You'd better come take a look."


	10. October 26th

L was peacefully busy when his computer beeped with a phone call from what his investigations had told him was Detective Morgan's private cellular number. Bemused, he wandered over to the computer and hit Connect.

"Detective Morgan?" he inquired calmly.

"L!" Morgan gasped. This was followed by what sounded like a sob. "It was _him_!"

L was instantly alert. "What was who, Detective?"

"The crimes!" Morgan cried, a little bit hysterical. "Sam! My brother! He's _dead_!"

"Don't move anything," L advised as sharply as he could without sounding harsh. "Let a team get down there; go somewhere—"

"You don't _understand!_" Morgan interrupted frantically. "It's not over - there's going to be another crime; he set it up! I only know because I ran home for something, I found him, he killed himself and there's another nursery rhyme and he's going to kill someone else!" Another sob.

"Are you sure?" L asked quickly. "When, where?"

"'Rock-a-Bye, Baby'," Morgan reported unsteadily. "By the clock; he stopped it and set it ahead to two - whatever he planned—"

L glanced at his computer clock. One fifty-seven, and who knew whether it matched the timepiece due to set off whatever crime was in store—

"We don't have time to investigate," L heard himself say, his own voice strained. "We have to figure out what he was planning, _now_. Who could he be after? Was it him who put Kat down the well, and why?"

"He - he was in boarding schools and things, and institutions like yours, for a while in America," Morgan replied, her voice quavering. "After my dad divorced his mom, while his life wasn't as steady. Sam hated them; he - but I thought he _liked_ children; I don't see why he would be trying to hurt them—"

"Children," L said, trying to keep his voice steady. He glanced at the clock - one fifty-eight. "He's been leaving nursery rhymes and he went after Kat; what if he's going to hurt one of the children?"

"I - maybe," Morgan said, also sounding as though she was trying to keep from completely losing it. "Rock-a-Bye _Baby_, maybe one of the younger ones. In the treetop? Do you have a treehouse? And the one before that was Mary Had A Little Lamb, but you don't have a Mary. Maybe the reference to a lamb, or following? Lambs represent innocence; 'Its fleece was white as snow'? And—"

"_No_," L breathed.

"No what? Do—"

"No, no, no, _no_," L moaned. "_He sent it—_" And then he was out the door running, leaving it to slam against the wall, leaving Morgan's startled questions on the computer.

He didn't have much time. A glance into the playroom yielded nothing, so he turned off down the corridor and went up the staircase three steps at a time, the frantic pounding of his heart in his chest echoing in his ears. _If he was too late_—

Flying down the corridor past a bewildered Watari, he turned a corner and slammed open the door to Near's room. The white-haired boy looked up, startled, from where he sat on the floor, assembling a puzzle, one arm looped around his new robot.

In one swift motion, L stooped, grabbed the toy in both hands, and threw it out the open window.

Just past the frame, the robot exploded.

L dropped to his knees and put both arms around Near, trying to shield him from the blast as fire and wood erupted inward. Hot embers stung his cheeks, and he put a hand on the back of Near's head, pushing the boy's face into L's chest to protect it as a wave of heat and smoke washed over them. He felt his lungs burning as he gasped for breath and heard Near beginning to cough.

What seemed like seconds later, it was over. Watari had appeared, fire extinguisher in hand, with almost inhuman speed, and L had staggered to his feet and managed to carry Near out into the corridor, where he turned the corner before sinking to the ground, giving the two a chance to catch their breath in clean air. There were frightened cries and the sounds of doors opening, and then children began appearing to find out what had happened.

"Go downstairs," L ordered, his voice hoarse from smoke. "Fiona, June, take Near to the infirmary. The rest of you, get to the playroom, fetch Rachel to stay there with you, and send Amos up here with as many wet towels as he can find. _Hurry._" Children scampered towards the staircase as two of the girls came forward to take Near's arms and help him up. The white-haired boy looked sooty and shaken but, thankfully, largely uninjured.

Once the hallway was clear, L headed back into Near's room.

It took half an hour before he, Watari, and Amos were satisfied that anything remotely resembling an ember had been doused and that everything was safe, and then L's two companions dragged him to the infirmary himself to be checked over and patched up. When he arrived, Near was peacefully asleep in one of the beds, wearing a clean set of pajamas a few sizes too big for him.

"Will he be all right?" L asked nervously as he sat down and stripped off his shirt.

"He's fine," the doctor assured, lifting his stethoscope to his ears and pressing the end to the left side of L's chest. "I checked him over carefully; he was frightened but not hurt. Breathe in and out, please."

L did so, feeling significantly calmer. Estavan Garcia had his complete trust about medical matters - the young doctor had only been working at Wammy's House for a few years, but he'd proved himself to be more than competent time and time again. With his expertise, the hospital-quality equipment in the infirmary, and Rachel's training as a nurse, it was rare that a medical problem within the House could not be solved without leaving it.

Once L had been sufficiently checked and had allowed his minor cuts and burns to be taken care of, he thanked Doctor Garcia and returned to his room to speak to the police. When he reached his computer, there was a call waiting from the police station. He answered it to discover Detective Morgan, looking slightly pale but calm.

"Watari just let us know what happened," she told him. "I'm so glad that neither you nor the boy was seriously injured. And - and I'm sorry," she finished miserably.

"What your brother did is not your fault," L said gently. "And your quick action is what saved Near's life. I'm sure our investigation—"

"Not ours," Morgan said quietly. "I - I asked my superiors if I could step down from it, since I'm involved now, and probably as a suspect. They wouldn't let me leave it entirely, but Detective Anderson is taking over the main management of it, and I'm going to work on it as his assistant."

L frowned faintly. "Your superiors were right; I would also like you to remain on this case. But I have no objections to working with Detective Anderson as well, provided that I can speak to him about it."

Morgan nodded. "He just got back; he was helping investigate my house and the final clues. I'll put him on."

She stood up, and for a few moments, there was the murmur of voices - and then a man sat down in front of the camera. He didn't look much like a police detective - his hair was long and straight, a bleached blond that contrasted strangely with the unremarkable brown of his facial hair, and his glasses had thick, circular frames. A series of metal studs climbed up his ears, his clothing was somewhat casual, and his smile was easy and careless.

"Hey," he said. "I'm Jeff Anderson."

"I am L," L said, rather unnecessarily. "I have been given to understand that you are now sharing this case with Detective Morgan."

Anderson nodded. "Yeah. Kathleen's a good investigator and I don't think she needs my help, but all this with her brother's gotten her shaken up, so I said I'd do what I could."

"I take it you have just finished investigating said brother," L told him. "What did you find?"

"It doesn't look good," Anderson said grimly. "Not for Kathleen, at least. It was definitely suicide - he hung himself from a beam - and we found all sorts of stuff hidden in his room: all the information and speculation he could dig up - some of it from Kathleen's case notes - on your orphanage, materials for making explosives, even stuff that suggests he may have been some kind of devil-worshipper. All in all, it sounds like he wasn't quite right in the head."

L considered momentarily. "That's an uncomfortably easy explanation," he decided.

"I know," Anderson nodded. "I think there's a chance he'd planned more, or in the worst case has some kind of accomplice he's left another part of the plot with. I'd like to do what we can to give your institution some kind of police protection."

"We don't allow outsiders on the premises," L informed him.

"I know that, too," Anderson replied. "But perhaps there's something else we can do. Kathleen said that the other day, you were talking about some kind of surveillance system?"

"Only in the context of why there can't be one," L said uncomfortably.

"Not inside the building," Anderson amended. "Definitely not inside; that would be too dangerous and too much of a breach of your privacy. But if you let us place cameras around the perimeter, we could monitor everyone entering the grounds without having to go inside them ourselves - act as a safe kind of security for you."

L considered. To be honest, the idea had a rather powerful appeal.

"Can you keep them from pointing inward towards the House without leaving any blind spots?" he asked.

"Absolutely," Anderson promised. "We could get them installed tonight, and I can show you what the feeds would look like before anyone else sees them, so that you can decide then."

L paused. "All right," he finally agreed.

"Wonderful," Anderson smiled. "I'll have them ready by this evening. I don't know if they're even truly necessary - after all, Sam Morgan's death may have been the end of this - but I want to do everything we can to make absolutely certain that your children are safe."

"Thank you," L said calmly before hanging up. He took a deep breath, then got to his feet and started downstairs towards the playroom, where he knew most of the House would be gathered, waiting for his instructions.

_Yes_, he thought to himself as he started down the stairs, _they _are_ my children. All of them. And I'll do whatever I need to in order to keep them safe._

But Sam Morgan was dead, and the case seemed to be closing, and maybe, just maybe, the danger was over now.


	11. October 28th

L sat staring at his computer, feet up on the edge of his chair, fingers tapping idly at one of his knees as he tried to decipher yet another puzzle. In the confusion and chaos of the twenty-sixth, he hadn't had a chance to look over Detective Anderson's report on the crime scene - so it was that the next night (now technically very early in the morning on the twenty-eighth), he sat going over yet another strange rhyme, this one found with Sam Morgan's body.

_This little piggy will die soon_  
_This little piggy is dead_  
_This little piggy sees shadows_  
_This little piggy sees red_

L chewed his lip uncomfortably. The person threatened with imminent death, he had concluded, was most likely Near - because Morgan had doubtlessly intended the rhyme to be found after his suicide, so he was the one mentioned that was dead. L wondered if he himself was the one seeing shadows - perhaps to represent fear? - but thought that, at the moment, "seeing red" described him far more accurately. He was furious, with a kind of quiet, sick, twisting sensation in his stomach, and the mockingly innocent-looking little lamb adorning the stationary on which the rhyme had been written only made things worse. Near had been moments away from being killed, and for some reason, L felt as though it was his fault for not suspecting Morgan sooner, for allowing outsiders to send toys to his children without so much as having them examined.

Well, that part was fixed now. Not only were the cameras Anderson had suggested in place around the perimeter - every parcel and package that entered the House was being carefully searched. Hopefully it would be enough.

Telling himself that this rhyme, like the others, was quite possibly part of a case now closed, L shut the document, sighing faintly, and opened up a browser window to check the news.

There was a soft knock on his door.

"Come in," L called gently, putting his computer to sleep and spinning around in his chair. It wasn't rare for the younger children to seek him out after having woken from nightmares, and he kept a hot-water machine and cocoa in his room just for those occasions. Tonight, he half-expected Near, after the events of the day before.

However, when the door opened a crack and a small head emerged halfway around it, the downcast eyes were not gray but blue, focused on their owner's bare (and rather dirty) feet as though searching for any excuse not to look up.

"Hey," Mello said quietly.

L knew better than to ask what was wrong. Instead, he waited quietly while Mello closed the door behind him, shuffled across the room, and climbed silently into L's lap.

"Trouble sleeping?" L suggested softly by way of circumlocution.

Mello shrugged, curling up slightly.

"You want to get to sleep, don't you?" L murmured, lifting a hand to stroke his hair gently. "You and Matt were going to go into town tomorrow morning - well, today morning - to buy Halloween candy, right?"

Mello nodded, then abruptly buried his face in L's chest.

"What is it?" L whispered as small hands dug into his shirt.

There was a long, long silence. Then, at last, murmuring the words into L's shoulder as though muffling them would stop them from being true, Mello spoke.

"A guy's been following me," he admitted quietly.

L tensed. "What do you mean? When, where?"

"Whenever we go into town," Mello mumbled. "At the Halloween Fair. And then while Matt and I were getting our costumes. Both times he was looking at me and following us around, and then the second time he started to follow us home and we ran."

"What does he look like?" L asked softly.

"I dunno," Mello murmured. "He's always wearing a costume and a mask." He curled up a little tighter. "What if he's there today? If I tell Matt, he'll either think I'm chicken or get scared himself, and if I tell Watari, he won't let us go and we'll _never_ get to leave the House again."

"You're not chicken," L told him gently, running a soothing hand over his hair again. "It's perfectly reasonable to be scared of someone like that, and it's a very good thing you told me about him." He smiled softly. "Would you like me to come with you?"

Mello looked up suddenly. "You would?"

"Of course," L smiled. "We'll tell Watari that I'm going with to make sure you don't get carried away, all right? Then he won't try to keep us from going at all."

Mello snickered quietly, already looking more cheerful. "Tell him _you're_ making sure we don't get carried away buying candy? He's not gonna believe that."

"Maybe not," L laughed. "I'll come up with something to keep him from worrying. I don't think that anybody is going to try to bother you if there's an adult with you. Just come get me when you're ready to leave, all right?"

Mello smiled. "Yeah, okay. Thanks." Climbing to the floor, he stood on his toes to give L a last hug and then scampered off and out the door.

L sat back and took a deep breath, worry flickering through his mind like a moth fluttering its wings against his subconscious. He wasn't worried about going out in public - he'd helped chaperone various trips and expeditions before. After all, in the event that the police (or anyone else) ever _did_ need to enter the House, being the only person on the premises who had never been seen in public would make him rather easy to identify as L. So he kept up a second identity as a staff member of the orphanage, and he rather liked the freedom it gave him.

No, what worried him was the very idea of why he was going to be in public at all. Ever since Mello had grown old enough to be allowed out with nobody but another boy his age to accompany him, disquiet had been tugging at the parental corner of L's mind, and having his paranoia suddenly vindicated felt like waking up to cold water.

Well, nobody was going to get anywhere close to L's children if he could help it.

Which is why the next morning (well, later that morning) found him slipping a small spray-canister of Mace into one of the pockets of his baggy jeans.

Which was technically illegal, and largely superfluous considering that L was trained in martial arts and didn't really need to Mace the stalker in the eyes.

…If someone was harassing Mello, the bastard deserved it.

Satisfied, L collected a jacket as well and then let his blond- and red-haired compatriots invade his room, grab an arm each, and cheerfully drag him outside. It didn't take them long to walk into town, and once they arrived, they made straight for a large supermarket/drugstore/etc., currently full of Halloween decorations and merchandise.

Predictably, Mello and L working together filled up a cart in record time. There were never trick-or-treaters to the House itself (L suspected that many of the town's children probably thought it was haunted), but every year the children too young to go out by themselves donned their costumes and went around knocking on doors and visiting the staff members, whom L always supplied with plenty of candy to give out.

Besides, there was really no such thing as too much sugar.

As the three emerged from the aisle, pushing their cart, L felt Matt tug on his sleeve.

"Can we go look at the video games?" the redhead wanted to know.

"They have video games here?" L asked bemusedly.

"Sure," Mello replied, with the air of one who had been dragged to look at them on numerous occasions. "By the pets."

"They sell pets here?" L inquired, eyebrows rising. Evidently, he didn't get out as much as he thought he did.

"Yeah," Matt confirmed.

"Over there," Mello said, pointing. "Just small stuff, though - hamsters, mice, f—"

The word died on his lips, and the hand he had extended shook slightly.

L looked up.

At first, he saw nothing - just a section of the store with a lot of cages and a large fishtank. Then, as he actually focused on the aquarium, a large yellow fish swam out of the way, and he saw it. Looking straight back at him through the tank was a face, a mask, its demonic features further distorted by the glass and the water, a dark, hooded robe draping over its body.

The Grim Reaper.

"It's him," Mello whimpered. L felt two pairs of hands latch onto him, clenching around his arms, even as anger began to replace the initial shock.

"Stay right here," he instructed quietly, detaching a child from either side. "I'm going to go see what he has to say."

Despite Matt's and Mello's whispered protests, he started off resolutely towards the menacing figure - which immediately faded backwards and disappeared around a corner.

By the time L reached the corner himself, it had vanished.

Sighing, he returned to Matt and Mello, resolving to ask the police to be on the lookout for the man. It was all he could think of to do at the moment, especially with his two charges pleading with him to return home.

Sometimes, L thought with a heavy heart as they made their way back along the road towards the House, Matt and Mello chattering happily after having gotten over their scare, it felt like being a parent was a great deal harder than being a detective.


	12. October 30th

_Be warned, the second half of this chapter is more spun-sugar than substance. XDD I did that for a specific reason. ;) The reason is that this is the last bit of fluff before all hell breaks loose tomorrow in the final chapter. XDD_

* * *

L was just getting ready to turn off his computer and head downstairs when Kathleen Morgan called him from the police station.

"Good evening," he answered the call calmly. "How are you doing, Detective Morgan?"

Morgan looked startled that he'd asked, then grateful.

"Better," she disclosed with a faint sigh. "I - I still don't understand it, and I still don't want to believe it, but Jeff and my boss have managed to talk a little common sense into me. I'm not going to let it get to me if I can help it."

L smiled. "Your courage is admirable. Tell me, is it something about that case which you were calling about?"

Morgan shook her head. "No, not that one. It's about the man you mentioned, who was stalking one of your children."

"Ah, yes," L frowned. "We were out again this afternoon, buying pumpkins for them to carve, but fortunately, we didn't see any sign of him."

Morgan paused. "You wouldn't have," she finally said, rather delicately, "because he's dead."

L's eyes widened. "Dead? When, how? Are we sure it's him?"

"We're not entirely sure when," Morgan replied. "His body was found about an hour ago, but it had been dead longer than that. It would appear that he fell from a fire escape or possibly even the roof of the building. Our best guess is that he was chasing or attempting to assault some person, there was a struggle, and he lost his balance. He had a few bruises and scratches on him, but it's undoubtedly the fall that killed him."

"Have you identified him?" L asked.

Morgan nodded. "Thomas Hunter, resident of the city, currently unemployed. Arrested twice on charges of child molestation, but acquitted both times for lack of evidence. Found dead wearing the very costume you described."

L swallowed. "That does sound like our man."

Morgan smiled wryly. "It does. I know we shouldn't be glad that he's dead, but at least you won't have to worry about sending your children into the city tomorrow night."

L nodded, even though he knew she couldn't see him. "Yes, that is a slight relief. I'm still nervous about letting them out, especially after what happened with Near - but that seems to be concluded now, and if the stalker is out of the picture as well, I really don't have a reason to keep them home. Halloween is one of the most special nights of the year for them."

"You don't have to worry," Morgan smiled. "Jeff and I will be out patrolling the streets, along with half of the rest of the force. We've divided the city up into areas and taken one each, and we'll be out there from sunset until the last trick-or-treaters have gone home. We want to make tomorrow night as safe as possible."

"Thank you," L said. "That's good to know."

"It's our job," Morgan assured him. "And please let us know if there's anything else we can do."

"I will," L replied. "Thank you again."

He hung up, then stood and headed downstairs with a sigh of relief. Perhaps things would be all right after all.

When he arrived in the kitchen, it was already set up for pumpkin carving, with chairs around the counters, newspapers spread to protect against inevitable messes, and various carving tools and decorating supplies. From across the room, Mello and Matt were waving him over to an empty stool.

"That one was yours, right?" Mello asked, pointing to the pumpkin sitting on the counter before the stool. L nodded.

"I believe it was. Do we have enough carving tools?"

Mello nodded. "Yeah. Hey, Near, your pumpkin's silver."

"I know," the white-haired boy said calmly from L's other side. "Watari helped me with the spray paint this afternoon."

"You're going to make it into a robot, aren't you?" Mello demanded.

Near smiled and reached for a scooping tool.

Over the next hour or so, his pumpkin did indeed become a robot - with square eyes and a square mouth, different colored lights inside making the former glow red and the latter glow blue.

"That's kind of cool," Mello admitted reluctantly, glancing up from the pumpkin he was decorating to look like a monster, with tinfoil fangs, evil eyes, small branches for clawed hands, and what appeared to be every other accessory he could fit onto its substantial surface. L smiled, remembering watching him dashing around the pumpkin patch with Matt in a gleeful search for the biggest one he could find.

Matt, for his part, was carving his pumpkin to look like Bowser, and L was decorating his with his elaborate L. Watari stopped by to look at them and smiled.

"Almost done?" he asked. "I can help you carry them out to the dining hall."

For that night, the chairs and tables in the large dining room had been pushed back to allow the residents to fill it with pillows, blankets, and sleeping bags. The fireplace was lit, the pumpkins were illuminated and lined up along the window-wall, and the members of the House gathered to celebrate Halloween and share each other's company.

Once L had taken his pumpkin out to put it in front of the window, children trailing, and crossed to stand by the fireplace on the opposite wall, he discovered Amos handing out paper plates of pumpkin pie and Rachel ladling hot apple cider into cups.

"Thank you," he told both of them. "And Happy Halloween." Collecting his sweets, he carried them over to the corner where his makeshift bed was piled, leaning back against the pillows and setting his plate of pie in his lap.

Immediately, his three companions dove under the blanket as well, Near latching onto his left arm and Mello his right, Matt curling up on the blond boy's free side. L, who was rather used to this phenomenon, simply smiled and ate his pie.

That night, as he fell asleep with the faint smell of woodsmoke drifting down from the fireplace, the jack-o'-lanterns like sentinels along the window, and a symphony of soft breathing rising from the group of small forms using him as a pillow, he allowed himself to grow calm. There were a lot of things L associated with Wammy's House - one of them was safety.


	13. October 31st

_Thank you so much for reading this; I've had a really great time writing it! Hope you enjoy the last bit - and Happy Halloween! :)  
_

* * *

"Hey, Mel?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm cold."

Mello sighed. "Just pretend you really are a pirate, Matt. Pirates don't get cold."

"Yeah, but…" Matt trailed off as the door before them opened.

"Trick or treat!" the boys chorused. The woman in the doorway smiled and proffered a bowl of candy.

"Happy Halloween," she told them cheerily.

"Thank you," Matt said politely.

"Happy Halloween!" Mello added.

After she'd closed the door and they'd started down the walk, the debate resumed.

"But you've got a ski mask to keep you warm!"

Mello smiled smugly. "Well, I guess we've settled the question of which is superior - it's not my fault ninjas wear warm clothing and pirates don't."

"Yeah, well," Matt grumbled, "I bet it'd be warmer on a ship—"

He paused again as they arrived at the next door, which was opened by a friendly-looking older gentleman who handed them lollipops.

"There you go, young sir!" he told Matt enthusiastically. He passed a blue one to Mello. "And one for you as well, young miss!"

Luckily for him, Matt managed to mumble a thank you and drag his dumbfounded friend away before Mello had recovered enough to retaliate.

"Who the hell does he think he is?" the blond boy fumed as they made their way towards the next house. "What an idiot! He probably needs glasses or something!"

"He was wearing glasses," Matt pointed out.

"Yeah, whatever," Mello muttered. "C'mon." He led the way up to the next house, along a path flanked by small torches, and knocked resolutely. A moment later, the door was opened by a smiling dark-haired man in a long blue cloak.

"Trick or treat!" the boys chorused.

The man smiled a little wider, reached forward, and abruptly pulled a small wrapped candy from behind Mello's ear.

"Trick," he told them. "I'm a magician; you can call me Mister Tailor. I do have candy to hand out, too, but I always like to show off my little illusions. Would you like to come inside?"

Mello glanced at Matt, who was peering hopefully at the warm yellow light spilling out of the house, and shrugged. "Sure, okay." He knew Watari probably wouldn't have been pleased, but something about the man was slightly familiar, and familiarity felt safe - so he and Matt entered and followed their strange host into slightly spare but clean and tidy kitchen, bright in the glow of fluorescent lights.

"Wait here for just a moment," the man requested. "My materials are in my study, but I thought we would be more comfortable here. Please feel free to have a seat and take some candy in the meantime." He pointed to a bowl on the table, then disappeared through one of the doors.

"You know," Matt remarked thoughtfully, "I've never actually been to a house that did trick before. It's kind of cool; I wonder why more people don't."

Mello shrugged, poking through the bowl to see if there was any chocolate. "I dunno; I guess most people don't know magic tricks."

Matt grinned and nodded to him. "That, or kids are so used to getting candy that people are worried they'll disappoint 'em if they don't—" He stopped speaking.

"What's wrong?" Mello asked nervously. His friend's face had gone pale, and his eyes were wide with the disbelief of nightmare, focused on a point over Mello's shoulder. Hastily, the blond boy twisted his head to look.

Standing in the doorway behind them was the Grim Reaper man.

—

L was at his desk when he heard the first explosion - deep, distant, and powerful, rolling in from the direction of the town like a clap of thunder.

Startled, nerves prickling and heart already beginning to pound with the panicky sense of a premonition being realized, he leapt to his feet and darted out the door, heading up the stairs to the towers, which afforded a good view of the city. He could see it spread out in a web of lights, clustered at the end of the long dirt road that led to the orphanage - and, from somewhere in its center, smoke was rising and the glow of fire was flickering. He was too far away to hear the screams, but his imagination was almost worse.

Then the second explosion went off.

This one was in a different part of town - L saw flames leap into the sky, and seconds later, the sound of the blast erupted through the air.

It took the third to shake him out of numb disbelief. By that time, Watari had joined him, his face grimmer than L had ever seen it.

"L, do you—"

"Oh, God," L suddenly moaned. "The children. Call them, page them all, get them back here as quickly as you can; get the staff to help, but leave Doctor Garcia here in case anyone comes back hurt. We'll go out and collect them; we have to hurry—" He was already dashing for the stairs, down, along the corridor, down another staircase, through the entrance hall, other forms dashing past him frantically—

Turning to run out the door, he collided with one of them, sending them both sprawling. When he scrambled up and saw who it was, his heart lurched sickeningly. Matt - alone, terrified, and in tears.

"Where's Mello?" L gasped, still regaining his breath from the fall.

"_L_!" Matt sobbed. "L, it was _him_!"

"_Who?_" L demanded. "What happened?"

"_HIM_!" Matt wailed frantically. He sucked in a breath and began to cough. "The man in the mask! He's got him, he - I got away - _please_, you have to help—"

"_Where_?" L whispered. Now was not the time to panic. Now was the time to think. He couldn't call the police; half of the town was burning and he'd heard a fourth explosion as he ran. He couldn't send Watari, who was the quickest and surest way of contacting and collecting the other children who were in danger - but it would be the work of moments to cover his face and collect the revolver he kept hidden in his desk, and Mello didn't have time to wait for a different rescuer.

Matt had barely finished choking out the directions before L was off and up the stairs, heart pounding, determined and filled with a kind of cold, frightened fury - picturing the face - the mask - he'd thought was gone, the visage of the monster, watching him coldly through the fishtank, framed by seaweed and distorted by water—

The bell began to ring the hour, and L froze in his tracks.

Bells.

Water.

Nursery rhymes, and double meanings, and _Oh God_, that was why it had sounded familiar, because it wasn't just the one rhyme, it belonged to another—

_Full fathom five thy father lies_  
_Of his bones are coral made_  
_Those are pearls that were his eyes_  
_Nothing of him that doth fade_  
_But doth suffer a sea-change_  
_Into something rich and strange_  
_Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell_  
_Hark, now I hear them:_  
_Ding-Dong, Bell._

Brittle thoughts were whirling through L's head like leaves in a gale, fast and fragile and desperate - bells and memories and ghosts and shadows and faces in the water and _they'd never found the body_—

He realized with a detached kind of bewilderment that he was crying as he ran, swiping tears away with his sleeves, hands trembling on the doorknob to his room as he wrenched it open. He had time, perhaps he had a little time, he had to be ready—

Twenty minutes and five explosions later, he was outside the house Matt had described, wrapped in a long, hooded black cloak, a plain mask over his face. Lifting his revolver in two shaking hands, he blasted the lock, shoved open the door, and stepped inside.

The house was dark - dark, silent, and with an eerie kind of empty feeling. Having made a quick search of the rooms on the ground floor, he started up the staircase, so tense that he felt lightheaded. There was a corridor, a dark, empty corridor, and at the end, a door cracked ever so slightly open.

When he opened it and stepped inside, weapon raised, it was to a small, bare, wood-paneled room, completely empty but for the small naked form lying limp in a corner, blond hair disheveled and face pale.

Breath in his throat, heart pounding so hard it was painful, L rushed across the room and dropped to his knees, jerking off his mask to see more clearly. Mello was breathing - breathing, thank any god available; just unconscious. Trying to regain the calm he knew he couldn't, L pulled off his cloak and draped it over the child.

Seconds later, six bullets had hit him in the back.

With a startled gasp, L slumped forward, clutching at his chest. A moment later, dark, wet, red patches began to appear through his white sweater, and he struggled to roll onto his side as a cool, pleasant voice spoke from behind him.

"Good evening," it murmured, and L groaned with the weight of another recognition.

"_Jeff Anderson._"

"Very good," the voice said softly. "Yes, that is one of my aliases - though it requires a disguise. I won't need it after tonight; Detective Anderson will presumably have perished, as will many other policemen, while helping to evacuate the city." A soft laugh followed. "He's not the only version of me you've met."

Fighting his way to a half-sitting position, leaning against the wall for support, L lifted his eyes to meet the murderer's, knowing already what he would see.

A handsome man with long black hair and dark gray eyes stood smiling at him. The same eyes, the same innocent smile, the same face L hadn't seen for a decade; was it ten years to the day? They'd held a funeral, but there had been no headstone onto which to carve the date - and now the ghost was returned.

"_A_," L whispered.

A smiled softly. "L."

"You're supposed to be dead," L murmured.

A raised an eyebrow. "Am I? You of all people should know, L, not to close a case without concrete evidence. Or did you not even consider the possibility that one of your own students might be trying to trick you?"

"It's happened before," L muttered darkly.

"Ah, yes," A smiled. "You never did figure out my hint, you know - not that I intended you to; I'm not a fool. Mary had a little _lamb._ It's in the letters." He chucked softly and pointed to the detective, crumpled against the wall, shirt staining red.

"L will die soon," he murmured. Then he pointed to himself. "A is dead." He gestured to Mello, still lying unconscious on the floor. "M sees shadows…" He smiled. "And B sees red. But he was a fool; that's why he's last. How is death a victory? Death is a defeat. I'm not going to imitate you, L; I'm not going to surpass you - I'm going to _become_ you."

"What do you mean?" L whispered raggedly.

"I'm going to put on the cloak that you've so kindly removed for me," A explained pleasantly, "and go back to your orphanage. You'll be dead in a few minutes - actually, I'm surprised you've lasted this long - and I'll make sure to knock over one of the lamps out front before I go, just to make sure all evidence of you is erased. On a night like this one, nobody will give a second thought to a house fire that got out of control - the fire department's busy taking care of my diversion."

"You're blowing up half the city as a _diversion_?" L demanded.

A smiled. "Of course I am. You were the one who taught me about using distractions, after all. Who will ever think, amidst all this chaos and destruction, that my goal was you? Because it has been, L - I've been studying you, watching you, testing you all month to find out how to draw you into the open. And it was just as I suspected - you're far too easy to predict, far too easy to manipulate. You've let yourself get attached to these children the way you never did for Brother and me."

"I'm aware that we made mistakes raising you and B," L gritted. "That, I think, is fairly obvious, given the results. The problems we had with you two were the _reason_ we changed things, the reason I started spending more time at the House and with the children, the reason we started taking care not to push them too hard. We're trying to fix things, A."

A smiled coldly.

"That may be so," he said. "I don't particularly care. My interest remains, as it was then, to become L. I knew it wasn't going to happen waiting for you to die - you're far too cautious for that - so I decided I'd have to do it my own way. And here you are, at my mercy, having very conveniently provided me with a disguise that will make me indistinguishable from you upon my return."

"How will that help you?" L demanded breathlessly. "Everyone at the House has seen me; they'll know as soon as you take off your mask."

A's smile became almost gleeful.

"You underestimate me," he said softly. "L, why do you think I put in those cameras around your perimeter? The police saw you leave, and soon, they'll see you return, having rescued the unfortunate child who had been abducted. I'll take him inside, put him in a bed, and go back outside, in view of the cameras. By that time, all the members of your little House will be safely back home - and when I erase them all, erase everyone who knows your face and all the evidence that could possibly point towards your identity, when the police arrive far too late to do anything, they'll have no choice but to accept that I am L."

"You're insane," L informed him unsteadily. "Whatever it is exactly that you're planning to do, it won't work."

A smiled once again.

"Oh, I somehow think it will," he remarked pleasantly. "After all, I have been planning it for a very, very long time." He reached into his coat pocket, removed a single sheet of paper, and let it flutter to the ground. Leaning over painfully to peer at it, L saw that it was a final nursery rhyme.

_Ladybird, ladybird_  
_Fly away home_  
_Your house is on fire_  
_Your children shall burn_

—

"They're here!"

Matt turned excitedly from where he was standing by the front window, looking out over the drive. Hastily, Watari got to his feet and joined the boy. There were two figures coming towards the house - one, a man wearing the cloak and mask that L had left in; the other, a small form draped in his arms.

"Mello!" Matt gasped as the door swung open and L entered quickly. The body in his arms was pale, limp, and appeared to be naked, wrapped in a large, thick blanket and held carefully to L's chest. Without a word, Watari led the way towards the staircase, and Matt dashed afterwards.

When they reached the infirmary, L set Mello down on one of the beds and began gently tucking the sheet over him.

"Shouldn't Doctor Garcia take a look at him?" Watari asked quietly. L shook his head.

"No," he murmured, his voice sounding slightly hoarse. "He's not injured, just terrified, and probably wouldn't like being touched or undressed. He's asleep; rest is probably the best thing for him right now."

"All right," Watari agreed quietly.

"I'm going to go check that all of the gates are locked," L said quietly. "I think it would be best to make sure we don't let any intruders onto the grounds tonight."

Watari's eyes hardened slightly. "All right. We'll stay here."

L nodded and disappeared, still wearing the mask and cloak.

"Watari, is something wrong?" Matt asked hesitantly - but Watari was already striding over to the nearest closet, wrenching it open, and pulling out what looked like some kind of large case or toolbox.

"Go to your room, Matt," he said sharply, returning swiftly to Mello's bedside.

"Why?" Matt demanded. "Why can't I stay? I want to—"

"Quiet!" Watari ordered, setting the toolbox on a chair, flipping it open to reveal all sorts of what looked like mechanical and electrical devices to Matt, and sitting down by Mello's bedside. "I don't have time for this. If you're going to stay, stay silent and don't do anything." He began pulling back the sheet covering Mello, and Matt opened his mouth.

"L said not to—"

"That was not L," Watari said, his voice cold. "Matt, I need silence."

Timidly, Matt bit his lip and held his tongue. Watari carefully folded back the sheet and unfolded the blanket Mello had been wrapped in, and Matt felt his eyes grow enormous.

Hidden under the blanket, strapped to his best friend's body, was a bomb.

—

Twelve - twelve explosions in the city tonight, and this would be the thirteenth. It would take with it any and all evidence to L's identity - including witnesses - and leave A as the sole possible claimant to the detective's name. The police were easy enough to fool - he'd done it before. And once the police believed him to be L, he would swiftly become one of the most powerful people on the face of the planet.

Standing in the darkness by the gate, pretending to check the lock and making sure the cameras could see him, he waited and counted down.

Ten… just a little longer.

Five… four… Three, two, _one_…

Nothing happened.

And then, abruptly, a figure dove out of the bushes and tackled him to the ground.

The struggle was vicious but brief. A could barely see his assailant in the dark, and the man fought like a tiger, and before A knew it, his face was in the dirt and his arms were being wrenched brutally behind his back - and then there were sirens coming.

It wasn't until policemen jerked him to his feet and handcuffed him that he saw his attacker - cold-eyed, white-faced, clothing soaked with blood.

"_You_!" he accused. "You're dead! You can't be here; I killed you! I shot you not half an hour ago and burned your body - you're _dead_!"

The man smiled coldly.

"It would appear that tonight is a night for ghosts to return to the world of the living," he remarked softly. Then, wordlessly, he stripped off his bloodstained sweater. At first, A only took in the armored vest and thought _Bastard, but he bled, I saw him_— and then he noticed the thin plastic tubes winding out from a squeeze-pump at the chest and taped clumsily to the vest.

"I confiscated this," L said coolly, "from a pair of would-be pranksters. It ended up coming in rather handy. It would appear that faking one's death can be rather useful." He smiled very grimly. "Though next time, I'm afraid, you won't be faking it."

"_No_," A whispered. "No, I won't die like some common criminal."

L regarded him coldly. "I'm afraid you will."

"No," A insisted. "Let me be killed, let me die, but not like that. Let me keep my dignity."

"It's more than you deserve," L told him. "If any of my cases require a guinea pig to die in a blaze of glory, I'll let you know. But I doubt it."

He turned his back and walked into the House.

—

That night, L made the rounds to check that the children were asleep. It was somehow extraordinarily comforting to see them each the way they always had been - Kat mumbling in her sleep, Quicksilver playing computer games under the covers, Cal curled up with his favorite stuffed animal, Near curled up with his favorite robot.

When he glanced into Mello's room, he saw not one but two heads half-poking out from beneath the blankets - one blond, one with red hair. Weak blue moonlight streamed through the window, supplemented by the warm orange glow of the night-light, and the covers rose and fell softly with two sets of steady breathing as the forms below them slept. L smiled faintly.

For the first time in weeks, everything was truly all right. As he closed the door quietly and began wandering back towards his room, he hummed softly to himself, wondering what adventures and mischief his young charges were going to get into the next day.

_Sleep, child, and when you do_  
_Dream a dream to drift you through the night_  
_That'll linger through the day_


End file.
